


Thirst

by ObsidianPen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Horror, M/M, all that jazz, because goblet!Tom doesn't get enough air time, this is going to get very smutty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:55:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23204296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianPen/pseuds/ObsidianPen
Summary: Things go awry when the trio beaks into Gringotts. Harry finds himself trapped, locked in the Lestrange vault, wandless and alone...With a horcrux.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 229
Kudos: 2271
Collections: HP Soul Bonds, Harry Potter, Harry Potter Centric Fanfiction, Harrymort/Tomarry Recs for the Soul





	1. First Taste

The gold was everywhere, and it was scalding.

Harry’s skin was on fire as he and Griphook landed atop a pile of burning hot treasure; the sword of Gryffindor and Hufflepuff’s cup went soaring from his hand in their fall. Griphook struggled to remain on his shoulders, desperate to avoid the rising tide of boiling metal. But there was too much, it was too late—Hermione and Ron were waist-deep in broiling coins, suits of armor, and other fake artifacts. They were being pushed against the vault’s door, beyond which the clanking was growing deafening.

They had to get out. Now.

“The sword!” Harry shouted to Griphook. “Where is the sword? It had the cup on it!”

Griphook spotted it first, near to where Hermione and Ron were being buried… and that was when the world seemed to turn in on itself.

It all happened quickly.

Griphook lunged and grabbed the sword. The cup, which had been hooked around the blade by the handle, was flung into the air, landing far from Harry’s reach. 

The door to the vault swung open. Fake treasure flowed out into the hall, raining down upon the goblin guards that had opened it. It took Ron, Hermione, Griphook, and surely both the sword and cup with it. Screaming filled the air.

_“Harry!”_

The door began to close.

Harry watched the scene unfold, wide-eyed with horror. Hermione was struggling to get to her feet, shouting his name; Ron too was panicking, reaching for his wand—Harry opened his mouth to shout something back, he tried to run over the burning piles of gold—goblins were screaming and wizard guards were arriving and a dragon roared—

The vault’s door shut with a resounding _clang_ … and then, silence.

Utter silence.

It was like the world had suddenly frozen. Harry stared, astounded to see that the treasure had stopped multiplying. Had, in fact, mostly disappeared. The curse had abruptly stopped. The moment the door closed everything had returned in an instant to its proper place. The vault was as pristine as it had been when they’d first entered.

And it was deathly quiet.

Panic seized Harry’s heart. “Ron! Hermione!” he called, banging on the vault’s door. It did not budge. “Griphook! Open the door! _Open the door!”_

Nothing.

Breathing fast and hard, Harry went to reach for his wand—only to find, to his horror, that it was not there. It must have fallen from his pocket amidst all the chaos; must have gotten dragged along with the fake treasure, his friends, the horcrux, the sword, and the traitorous goblin. 

He was trapped in a vault and _he did not have his wand._

Harry ran a shaking hand through his hair. They would open the door at any moment. They had to. Wouldn’t they? Whether it was the Gringott goblins or Hermione and Ron or a fucking Death Eater, someone would want this vault open to get him out. To save him or kill him remained a question, but they wouldn’t leave him in here.

Harry swore. His scar prickled. He wiped a hand over his forehead, and only then realized how sweaty he was. He was drenched. Though the treasure had stopped multiplying, it was still astonishingly hot in the vault.

Perhaps there was some other way out? Doubtful, Harry thought, but he turned to begin his search anyway.

Then he saw it.

There, sitting in the very middle of the vault, alone on the floor… was the cup. It had not been there just moments before. Harry stared at it. He had been sure that it too had been poured out of the vault with the wave of fake treasure… evidently, this was not the case.

“How did you get there?” Harry asked. The cup, of course, did not answer.

Harry gave the horcrux a wide berth as he moved through the vault. The sword, was the sword here too? Amazed, Harry saw it sitting high on a shelf, on a display—but then his spirits instantly fell. No, Griphook had held the sword in his hands when the door opened. This sword here was a replica. A fake.

Harry went and grabbed it anyway. He pulled it from its display and swung it experimentally once, twice. It felt real, at any rate.

“I don’t suppose I’d get this lucky,” he murmured, turning to face the cup. “But I guess I have nothing to lose.”

With one almighty swing, he brought the sword down upon the cup of Hufflepuff. It made a loud _clang_ when it collided, sending the cup soaring across the room and banging into the suit of armor and that just moments ago was replicating, nearly killing them all. It rolled across the floor until it came to a sad, anti-climactic halt. It looked perfectly intact.

“Fuck,” Harry swore. He let the fake sword fall from his sweaty palm. “Fuck.”

Of course it wouldn’t work; the sword was not real. Harry shot the fallen cup a glare before turning his attention back to the door.

“Hermione!” he shouted again, banging on it uselessly. Why was it taking so long for them to open it? “Ron! Let me out! Griphook, you bastard! Let me out! We had a deal!”

Harry yelled and pounded and even—regrettably—kicked the giant metal door, trying with all his might to get them to open up. But he had a terrible feeling that they could not hear him. This strange silence that had suddenly encapsulated the vault, he assumed, must have made it impossible for them to hear him too.

And it was so hot! Why was it so hot in this vault? Scowling, Harry approached the suit of armor. He touched it, then immediately retracted his hand. It was no longer scalding, but the metal was warm, very warm. It was radiating heat. Upon inspecting the artifacts next to it, Harry realized this was the case for everything in the room. All of the ancient treasures in the Lestrange vault were exuding a deep, penetrating heat, making the space feel like an uncomfortable sauna. 

Harry turned to go back to the door, about to begin shouting again, but stopped short.

The cup was back in the center of the room.

He had just hit it; Harry had just swung it to the other side of the vault, angrily… but it had _moved_. It sat exactly where it had been before, unscathed, standing upright. The fake sword was also back where it belonged, returned to its display.

Harry gawked at the cup. When had it moved? _How_ had it moved? How had the _sword_ moved?

“No,” Harry said, pointing at the cup accusingly—as though denying that anything strange had happened would make it so. “You did not move. That is not possible.”

The cup, being a cup, did not respond.

“Fuck,” Harry said again, once more running his fingers through his hair. His hands were shaking. How on earth…

Then it dawned on him. If this horcrux had moved itself on its own…

“You’re doing this,” he whispered, pointing at it again. “You opened the vault door, you closed it afterward, locking me in here, you’ve cast this spell of silence… You made everything go back to the way it was and you’re making the room hot, even now…”

Harry shook his head. Warily, he turned his back on the horcrux and returned to the door. “Let me out!” he screamed again. “Ron! Hermione! Open the damn door!”

Nothing.

Frustrated and afraid, Harry pulled his t-shirt off. It was so sweat-covered that he practically had to peel it from his back. He wiped his face with it, then tossed it aside.

He was going to die in here.

He was going to die of dehydration before Lord Voldemort ever got the chance. Swearing several more times, Harry turned, ready to look for something, anything to use to escape. The cup had not moved again… but there was something different about it. Harry approached it with utmost caution.

It was no longer empty.

The cup of Helga Hufflepuff, a horcrux, was now full of what appeared to be water.

The sense of thirst that accosted him was nearly crippling in its severity and abruptness. Harry’s chapped lips suddenly felt far drier; his throat burned with a ferocity he had never known before. The heat in the room seemed to escalate in a moment, growing hotter still.

Harry shook his head at the cup. “Oh, hell no,” he said, backing away from it. “If that—if for one second—if you think I’m going to drink some fucking mysterious horcrux juice, _you are out of your fucking mind!”_

The cup glittered innocently at him.

Harry swallowed hard. His tongue felt like sandpaper when he licked his lips, trying pointlessly to wet them. He crossed his arms and glared.

“No,” he said again.

The cup remained quite still.

“No way.”

No one was arguing with him.

Harry began pacing, his mind reeling and his heart racing. How long would he last in here? How long could go in this cursed, heated room without water? He was already beginning to feel light-headed.

 _Why_ were they not opening the door?

Harry slumped to the floor, sitting cross-legged in front of the horcrux. He looked at it with narrowed eyes, examining the emblem of Helga Hufflepuff. The badger seemed to be mocking him with its adorable eyes.

This was a trap. This was a horrible, _obvious_ trap. He could not seriously be considering drinking the liquid that had just mysteriously appeared in a known vessel of Lord Voldemort’s broken soul…

…Could he?

He would not stay alert for long otherwise. Harry’s mind felt fuzzy; he was becoming weaker and more delirious with each passing second. It was so hot.

He was so _thirsty_.

They weren’t opening the door. He was going to die. He would pass out first, probably, and then he would die.

 _I have no choice,_ Harry realized.

Slowly, he reached for the cup. The golden metal was blissfully cool to the touch; the exact opposite of the sweltering air in the vault. Harry swallowed thickly before raising it to his chapped lips. He closed his eyes and, after another moment of hesitation, drank.

Harry nearly moaned when the liquid touched his tongue. It was the sweetest, coolest water he had ever tasted. It was heaven pouring down his throat. He drank the cup dry, and when the goblet was empty had to resist the maddening urge to lick the interior metal clean. Instantly, his mind felt clearer. It was astounding what just a small amount of water could do.

Harry lowered the cup. Then, somehow, as though from right behind him, Harry heard a voice. Words spoken in such a soft whisper he barely heard them.

_Equal exchange…_

He dropped the goblet. Harry jumped to his feet and whipped around, frantic, his eyes scouring the vault. “Who said that?” he shouted. _“Who said that?”_

There was no one there. 

Harry turned back around, slowly. His pulse was racing. 

The cup, though he had just dropped it, sending it rolling away again, was right back where it had been. In the center of the room.

Once more full of glittering, beautiful water.

“What the fuck,” Harry whispered.


	2. Equal Exchange

Harry looked everywhere.

He climbed over piles of gold and onto shelves that held what were assuredly priceless artifacts (with the exception of the sword, being a fake and all), pushing aside chests and scepters and other glittering, gem-encrusted objects, looking for the source.

 _Something_ in here had spoken.

It was probably futile, this mad searching, but it occupied Harry’s mind and delayed his coming to the inevitable conclusion. The door wasn’t budging, at any rate, and no amount of shouting seemed to have any effect—no one could hear him. Not that Harry had much of a voice left to yell with, anyway. His throat was already painfully dry again. He tried not to think about it.

Harry found all sorts of fascinating objects in the Lestrange Vault—all of which were radiating with an unnatural, horrible heat. Old crowns and tiaras that were covered in crystals; dark-looking books so ancient that they might have been a thousand years old (and while he was curious, Harry’s experience had taught him not to open magical tomes at random… if the ones allowed in the restricted section at Hogwarts merely screamed, he could only imagine what the ones in here might do), tapestries with coats of arms from both the Lestrange and Black family. There was one painting—a large and ominous work that had been partially covered by a sheet before Harry unearthed it. Despite its ornate silver frame, it had nothing painted on it but a flat field of black. Harry shuddered when he looked at it; it was like staring into a void. He quickly covered it back up again with the sheet. 

Sadly, nothing Harry came across looked like something that might help him escape… or like something that could have spoken in his ear.

Which left the obvious answer.

Harry turned, slowly, to face the horcrux. It remained exactly where it had been, sitting in the middle of the vault, full of what appeared to be water.

“You said that,” Harry said. His throat burned when he spoke; he was already aching with thirst again. Rummaging through heaps of heated treasure certainly hadn’t helped. Harry wiped his sweaty brow and ignored the painful sensation. “Didn’t you?”

Silence.

“Well?” Harry snapped. He took a few steps closer to the goblet, cautious in his movements. “You did, didn’t you?”

No response. Growling in frustration, Harry began to pace the vault, circling the golden cup as he marched. What did he know of horcruxes and their… properties?

That they were cognizant, for one.

Harry knew all too well the mental capabilities of horcruxes; he had personally dealt with two. The diary was extremely conscious. It was able to communicate at once, using its blank sheets as a means to write whatever it wanted and receive messages in turn. Written language. It had been able to charm its way with words into Ginny’s heart, possessing her until it could take on a body of its own. At that point it was even able to interact with the physical world, holding Harry’s wand aloft and using it to write his name in the air, revealing who he was…

Cognizant, absolutely… but they were also not all the same. Couldn’t be, really, Harry mused, as he eyed the cup warily. The diary was able to write; the locket had not been. That horcrux had operated on an entirely different level.

Harry remembered the way it had felt to wear that cursed necklace, passing it around between himself, Ron, and Hermione in the woods. That cold metal against his skin had filled him with an immediate apprehension. When he was wearing the locket, Harry could not quiet the thoughts that usually only plagued him at night, in his weaker moments…

_You are going to get them killed… This is hopeless, you are going to lose, going to die… You should disappear in the night and surrender yourself… Perhaps you could barter for the safety of their lives for yours… He does not want them, after all…_

_Voldemort only wants you…_

But Hermione had always had an uncanny ability to know when enough was enough. Whenever Harry felt like he might give in to such tragic temptations, Hermione would come to sit next to him, touching his shoulder and holding out her hand expectantly. _My turn_ , she would say without speaking, and Harry would gratefully pass the locket on.

He always wondered what it was the locket had made Hermione think or fear, though he would never be so tactless as to ask. What did the horcrux of Voldemort whisper to the muggle-born friend of Harry Potter? While Harry could hazard a few solid guesses, he would never know for sure.

Ron, however, was a different story. 

Harry saw with his own eyes how the locket had been influencing him. Ron had been harboring an irrational fear that he and Hermione might be… romantically inclined, because Harry was the Chosen One and Ron was just Ron, one of many Weasley boys and the least impressive of them all…

But it was the way that the locket had manifested those fears that was so troubling. It was not simply ink on a page, able to share memories of Tom Riddle’s past; it was more, so much more… Voldemort’s eyes, dark and handsome and very real, were lurking behind those glass windows, and from them had come not memories, but the most terrible of illusions…

Those eyes had ballooned into a false version of himself and Hermione, both more beautiful and more terrible than they were in life… They had begun to mock Ron, who held the sword, and then Riddle-Hermione’s arms had twined around Riddle-Harry’s like a snake… their lips had met…

It had been far more powerful magic than the diary, Harry thought. He had seen a glint of red in Ron’s eyes; could tell that, for a fractional moment, the locket had almost won… A few hours at a time over the course of a couple of weeks and one terrifying, haunting illusion, and the locket had nearly won Ron’s heart.

Why was that? Harry wondered. Was it just because Voldemort was older when he had made that horcrux—a more powerful wizard in general, and therefore a more powerful horcrux? Or was it the nature of the object itself? Harry frowned, recalling what Hepzibah Smith had said when she had met with Riddle…

_‘…All kinds of powers it’s supposed to have… but I just keep it nice and safe in here…’_

She had said that regarding both the locket _and_ the cup.

Harry paused in his pacing.

“You said that,” he repeated, this time in a much calmer voice.

The cup was as stationary as before. Full of water, shining and pristine.

Harry dared to take a few steps closer. He crouched down, examining the goblet more intensely.

“So you can talk,” Harry continued. Now that he was closer, he could see that the eye of the badger was actually a small, black gemstone. Perfectly polished and smooth. A black diamond, perhaps? A pearl?

“And you can do a lot more than that, too,” Harry said, a plot slowly forming in his mind. If this was a portion of Lord Voldemort he was dealing with—and it was—then he could use what knowledge he had to his advantage.

Horcruxes were cognizant, but they were disconnected from their master. The diary had not known anything beyond where its memory stopped, the day of its creation, and what Ginny had told it. The locket, therefore, probably also only knew its own trajectory until it had been worn by… Umbridge, perhaps? Yes, Harry was certain that the locket had wormed its way into her consciousness at least a little; and it had probably found a happy home in her twisted, vile heart…

Pushing aside a very sickening image of a universe where they had _not_ interceded at the Ministry when they did; where Umbridge had worn the locket longer and gotten herself possessed, leaving the world in the hands of not one but _two_ Dark Lords (one of which would be part Umbridge!) Harry, refocused. The locket only learned what it did by being worn. So, aside from its memories up to the day that Tom Riddle created it, this cup knew little else… Probably only the knowledge that it was being kept in Gringotts, safe and sound… until one day a trio of reckless teenagers burst in with a greedy goblin and Gryffindor’s sword, that was…

This horcrux did not know who Harry Potter was. It had never had anyone telling it Harry’s long, torrid life story of defeating Lord Voldemort as a baby, leaving him little more than a waif for over a decade.

It was ignorant. Perhaps… perhaps Harry could work with that.

After all, he was almost positive that it was the cup itself that was keeping the door closed. This goblet had seemingly made itself quite at home here. It had been able to stop the multiplying curse while maintaining a brutal heat to weaken Harry; it had magically put everything right back in its place, unduplicated and unharmed; it had manifested itself to the center of the floor, full of tempting water…

Harry’s throat burned again, vicious, but he swallowed back the urge to drink.

“You’re a very powerful object,” Harry said, doing his best to sound as though he was in awe. He thought for a moment to pretend as though he did not know what a horcrux was, but then remembered it was too late for that. He had already fucked himself over on that one, screaming out the words ‘horcrux juice’ like an utter fool. That, and he had tried to stab the thing with the fake sword of Gryffindor. An act which probably wasn’t going to help him with this plot, Harry realized, but he could think of no other way to move forward.

“A very powerful _horcrux_ ,” Harry amended. “One of the darkest, most mysterious objects of all…”

The cup stayed as it was, perfectly still… but Harry swore the badger engraved on the side seemed to be smiling at him.

“Equal exchange… what does that mean?” Harry asked.

No response.

“Well?” Harry said, quickly growing irritated again. “What does that mean? What do you want? Speak!”

_Drink._

The word, soft as it was, startled Harry so badly that he jumped, falling out of his carefully crouched position. He stumbled backward, arms flailing as he did a sort of panicked, rapid crabwalk to get away from the cup, hurtling straight into the suit of armor as he did. Its helmet fell from its shoulders, hitting Harry in the head before crashing to the ground, filling the vault with a near-deafening _clang_. 

“Owww…”

Harry rubbed his now pounding skull. That had hurt, badly, but it was not such a terrible blow that he blacked out or felt light-headed—just stupid. He had definitely had worse injuries, that was for sure.

Feeling a bit flustered—was the cup able to… _see_ all that? Probably—Harry stood. He jammed the armor’s helmet back onto its shoulders (it was still uncomfortably warm) and turned back to the cup.

“Drink,” Harry said, repeating the one word he had been given. His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth. “Drink, and you’ll tell me?”

Harry braced himself for the whispered response, but none came this time. There was nothing but silence in the vault.

Harry cast the door one last, desperate look. What was happening out there? Had Ron and Hermione gotten caught, or had they fled? Had a fight broken out? Were they fighting even still?

Harry doubted they would leave him, but he hoped dearly that they had escaped. He told himself firmly they had. He could not face the reality of what happened to them if they had not.

But if they _did_ escape… If they made it out and the rest of the Gringotts staff knew what was happening; that an intruder was trapped inside the Lestrange vault…

That it was _Harry Potter_ …

Well, it wouldn’t be long before Lord Voldemort himself was informed and showed up, would it?

Harry turned and faced the cup again. _Equal exchange_. If it was giving him water—life-saving, beautiful water—then what would _he_ be giving _it_?

His fears? His secrets?

His soul?

Harry swallowed thickly, the action making him all too aware of how his throat felt like it was coated in a fine layer of sand.

He supposed he did not have much of a choice.

What he needed was to get out of this vault, and quickly… and to do that, he needed to convince the horcrux to let him out.

“Okay,” Harry finally said. “I’ll drink.”

Harry took a deep breath before kneeling beside the cup. He picked it up gingerly with both hands, curling his fingers around both the handles. Then he brought his lips to the gilded rim and drank.

The water was somehow even more delicious than it had been the first time. Cool and smooth and beautifully wet. Harry swore he saw stars as the liquid coated his tongue, pouring down his throat…

Stars…

That same voice, velvety smooth and soft, sounded once more—but this time it was different. Harry felt the breath against his skin as the words were whispered in his ear:

“Equal Exchange…”

The lights dancing in Harry’s eyes became brighter, and then the Lestrange Vault blurred and vanished from view.


	3. Face to Face

The sensation was familiar. Harry felt like he was floating and falling at the same time, toppling gently into some plane of existence that was not wholly separate from the world he knew, but… adjacent, perhaps. He was slipping into an echo, a memory.

It felt the same when the diary had done it.

Harry’s feet touched down upon the floor of a beloved and familiar room—the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Instantly, Harry was filled with a near-crushing sense of homesickness. The stars that had first come into view as his perspective shifted were scattered above him, the reflection of the real stars strewn about the castle’s enchanted ceiling. Much closer were the candles that hovered, their tiny flames illuminating the Hall… which was far from empty, Harry soon realized.

As the memory became more concrete, Harry could see them: hundreds of students in Hogwarts uniforms, their faces glowing in the candlelight like so many lanterns. It was exceptionally quiet for being so packed—the students who were speaking were doing so behind their hands, whispering; the ghosts were so stoically still as they hovered by their respective tables that Harry found them much eerier than usual. It only took him a moment to figure out why. The tables were full of golden trays and cups, but no food. There were empty sections at the front of each house table. The hall was thrumming with anticipation.

This is a sorting, Harry realized.

Riddle’s sorting…

Just as he had the thought, the front doors burst open. A row of first-year children came shuffling in, and God, they really were short, weren’t they? Harry moved closer, stepping between two tables as he searched for Riddle. He was tall for his age, Harry knew, so he should be easy to spot…

Harry stopped short, confused when he saw the first girl in line. She looked a lot like Hannah Abbot.

A _lot_ like Hannah Abbot.

Harry raced down the line and was shocked to find not an eleven-year-old Tom Riddle… but himself.

Harry James Potter, awkward and nervous as he waited in line behind Sally-Anne Perks. And there was Hermione with her bushy brown hair and buckteeth, closer to the front, and behind him was Ron, looking not anxious relieved… because he had thought the sorting was going to involve fighting a troll, Harry recalled, and was pleasantly surprised that it was only trying on a hat…

Harry whirled around, suddenly seeing faces he recognized everywhere. The Weasley twins and Percy at the Gryffindor table; a young Cho Chang at Ravenclaw and Cedric Diggory at Hufflepuff. At the staff table, he saw Snape and Quirrell—who had Voldemort sticking out of the back of his head!—and in the center, looking the picture of powerful wizardry, was _Dumbledore_ …

“When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool and be sorted,” rang McGonagall’s authoritative voice. She cleared her throat, and with the scroll unfurled before her called, “Abbot, Hannah!”

As his sorting commenced, Harry’s thoughts began to spiral. How was it that he was here, in _his_ memory? The diary had only been able to show him _its_ memories; it had never gleaned anything from Harry except what he had written down himself.

“I didn’t agree to this,” Harry announced. He turned on the spot, marching straight into Slytherin table and passing through it like a ghost. Millicent Bulstrode took her seat at the front end, looking pleased with herself. “You can’t just watch my memories. Hey!”

Harry, not seeing any version of Riddle here to yell at, aimed his anger at the enchanted ceiling. “You hear me? Get out of my head! Put me back!”

The illusionary stars twinkled back at him. Harry glared at the false sky and began to pace furiously.

 _Maybe I can get out of it myself_ , he thought. He closed his eyes as he went back and forth across the hall, marching right through students and tables and being unable to feel any of it. He imagined the vault, like maybe picturing it in his head and ignoring this memory would dump him back into reality.

“Granger, Hermione!... GRYFFINDOR!”

_Don’t look, don’t watch, think of the vault…_

“Longbottom, Neville!... GRYFFINDOR!”

_Don’t engage, imagine that stupid suit of armor…_

“Malfoy, Draco! SLYTHERIN!”

_La, la, la, I can’t hear you…_

Harry’s curiosity got the better of him when ‘Perks, Sally-Anne’ was called. The sandy-haired girl sat on the stool, where the hat shouted ‘HUFFLEPUFF!’ after only a moment. Which meant…

“Potter, Harry!”

Harry felt similar sensations now as he had then when his name was called. A strange, second-hand anxiety pooled in his stomach as the whispers broke out across the Hall, hissing sounds like little fires:

“Did she say ‘Potter’?”

“ _The_ Harry Potter?”

 _Great,_ Harry thought morbidly. So much for the horcrux not knowing anything about who he was. It was abundantly clear that he, _Potter, Harry_ , was famous in this memory. Seeing it from an outside perspective made that even more obvious.

 _But it doesn’t yet know_ why _I am famous,_ Harry reassured himself.

He walked alongside his memory, wishing he could give his eleven-year-old self the confidence he’d never had at that age. The child-Harry sat on the stool, then pulled the hat onto his head so that his face was almost entirely hidden from view.

_Hm… Difficult, very difficult…_

Harry was shocked to hear _that_ voice. The Sorting Hat, and what has once been a very _private_ conversation…

 _Not Slytherin,_ he had thought, and he felt those same intentions now like an echo in his head. His child-self was gripping the stool so hard his knuckles were white. _Not Slytherin, not Slytherin…_

 _Not Slytherin, eh?_ said the hat. _Are you sure? You could be great, you know…_

Harry covered his ears and moved away from the stool, trying once more to block the memory out. He really didn’t need a version of Tom Riddle knowing that the Sorting Hat had wanted him to be in Slytherin. Or anything about him at all, really.

It was no use _. Slytherin will help you on your way to greatness, no doubt about that… no? Well, if you’re sure… better be_ GRYFFINDOR!

The last word was shouted in the hall, and applause broke out at once—applause that was much louder than anyone else’s. The child-Harry shakily walked to his new house table, where Percy Weasley shook his hand vigorously and the twins began to chant, ‘We got Potter! We got Potter!’

But even amongst the cheers and noise, Harry could hear quite clearly the next voice that whispered in the back of his mind:

“Interesting.”

Harry whirled around, knowing full well that it was not the Sorting Hat that had spoken, but the horcrux. He looked everywhere, anger and fear battling for dominance in his heart. “Get out of my memories!” he roared. “Stop this!”

Harry froze when his eyes landed on something—some _one_ that was out of place. There, at the back of the hall and seated at the Slytherin table, was a student who appeared to be watching the sorting, but whose face was more obscured than anyone else’s… they were a bit off in other ways, too; their entire form was oddly blurred, and it was hard to tell if the darkness on their head was from their hood being drawn, a hat, or dark hair…

As Harry moved closer, cautious, their focus suddenly snapped to his. Harry’s heart froze when a pair of eyes, vivid and contrastingly clear compared to the rest of their hazy body, stared at him.

Dark, smoldering eyes. The candlelight glinted in them like tiny sparks.

Harry didn’t even have time to gasp before he was dropping the goblet, falling to floor and landing on his arse not in the Great Hall of Hogwarts but in the vault. The cup clattered on the hard floor beside him, causing him to yelp and roll to one side in a hurry to escape. Harry pushed himself to his feet and backed away until he was as close to a pile of heat-radiating gold as he could stand. He wiped his sweaty brow and gathered himself, readjusting his glasses and keeping his focus firmly on the now stationary cup.

 _What the fuck,_ Harry thought, certainly not for the first time since being trapped in the vault.

Harry took several long, deep breaths as he willed his heart rate to slow. The goblet, he noted, did not seem keen on moving while he had his eyes on it. He therefore slowly lowered himself to the ground, sitting cross-legged and maintaining eye contact with the sideways badger as he did. Its polished black eye flashed at him.

“What the fuck was that?” he asked, very seriously.

The cup did not respond. Which Harry found infuriating at this point because he knew it was capable, it was just… choosing not to.

“You said equal exchange,” Harry went on, feeling foolish yet determined to converse with it. “Okay, then. You gave me… water. And after that first sip of water you… Hm, what did you get in exchange from me…”

 _Sentience,_ Harry realized. Or not _actual_ sentience, for surely the horcrux was already cognizant to a degree, but the ability to make its sentience known. The cup had not been able to speak before. But after Harry had taken that first drink, it had been able to whisper in a word in his mind…

“I gave you a voice,” Harry concluded. “That was our first… _transaction_. Water for me, the ability to talk for you. So. Why don’t you speak?”

The cup did not speak.

“Please?” Harry added weakly. Manners didn’t seem to make a difference; the cup remained mute.

Gritting his teeth, Harry went on. “All right. Fine. I’ll figure it out myself. Equal exchange… what the hell just happened, then? You gave me more water, and then… my memory? Is that what the deal is from now on? Water for memories?”

“For now,” whispered the voice. And then, in a smug tone, “Harry Potter.”

Harry whipped around, for every time he heard that tenor it sounded like it was coming from right behind him—he swore he could feel the breath on his ear. But when he looked, he saw nothing but the piles of gold and ancient treasure.

“How are you—oh, come on!”

By the time Harry had turned to face the cup again, it was once more standing upright, gleaming brightly in the center of the floor.

Full of beautiful, tempting water.

“Quit—quit instantly moving like that every time I look away! It’s—It’s—”

 _Fucking freaking me out,_ was what Harry was about to say, and then he remembered what he was trying to do here.

“It’s alarming, that…. Frightening and unpredictable power.”

The cup didn’t say anything to that, but Harry thought the dark eye shone a bit brighter.

“So… you know my name now,” Harry said, doing to his best to sound casual. “Well, I know yours too, horcux. Or should I say _Tom Marvolo Riddle_.” Harry smirked. “How’s _that_ for equal exchange?”

The cup didn’t speak, but it did respond. The lights illuminated the vault all flickered, and an impossible gust of wind swept across the room, causing Harry’s skin to prickle despite the overwhelming heat of it. The suit of armor creaked ominously, like it might come to life at any moment; the sheet over the painting in the back flickered, revealing for a moment its black, empty canvas. The fake sword of Gryffindor slid in its display, the sharp metal scraping and causing a horrid, high-pitched sound that grated on Harry’s ears.

“Okay, okay!” Harry shouted. “I’m sorry! I won’t say it again!”

The impossible winds stopped. The suit of armor’s head, however, had shifted, turned now so that its empty eyes were facing him directly. Harry shivered and turned his focus back to the cup.

A long moment of silence followed, causing Harry’s thoughts to race. He concentrated hard, hoping, maybe, to glean some insight into what Voldemort was doing. He could see and feel nothing. Harry convinced himself that this was a good sign, for surely if Voldemort knew he was here, or if he had caught Ron and Hermione, he would feel… something. 

_Manic joy, probably,_ Harry thought sourly. _I’m just a sitting fucking duck in here... No need for his stupid pet snake to hold me when I’m locked in a vault._

Which was why he needed to figure a way out of here, and soon. Harry frowned. His tongue already felt like it had been cooked on the surface of the sun again, and his unruly hair was drenched in sweat. He found his shirt on the floor and picked it up, using it once more to wipe his face. “Must you make it so unbearably hot in here?” he muttered, glowering at the cup.

It didn’t say anything, of course, because it didn’t need to. Harry considered throwing his sweaty shirt at it, but wisely decided against it.

He once more began to pace, walking around the cup and feeling very strange as he did—it was rather like the minnow circling the shark. Harry kept an eye on it as he once more brainstormed ways to escape. The water glistened at him, tantalizing him with its unnatural glitter.

Continuing to drink from the goblet was madness, Harry knew it. But it was also the only thing keeping him alive in here. Drinking from it was inevitable, especially when it was so fucking hot. Harry had to admit that the horcrux really was incredibly powerful—and clever. Which was not surprising; he would expect nothing less from Tom Riddle.

But if he continued to drink, then it would continue to pull from his memories… which, evidently, Harry had no say in which ones he saw. It was the horcrux pulling the strings there, selecting whatever memory was… equal? A memory that consisted of whatever the horcrux thought was of equal value to a drink of water…

Harry pondered that, wondering how such an exchange of equality could be measured. Which was a very difficult task, suddenly. _Thinking_. Harry’s head was beginning to hurt, and he was feeling a little light-headed. He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes, trying not to let the sensation of his scorching dry throat distract him.

“Drink,” whispered the voice.

Harry glared at the cup. “Fuck off,” he snapped, then instantly regretted it. 

_Well, so much for trying to win it over._ Harry closed his eyes again, trying once more to sense Voldemort’s thoughts… Voldemort…

_Voldemort…_

Harry’s eyes flew open, a sudden stroke of inspiration—or perhaps dehydrated insanity—striking him. He could not open the door himself for he did not have a wand, nor did any amount of shouting seem to matter from within the vault’s walls… but what if he could reach the outside world in another way?

The taboo.

Harry nodded to himself, pacing around the cup much more quickly now. Yes, if he said the Dark Lord’s name out loud, then he would trigger the taboo—and the Snatchers would be alerted, and they would apparate here at once… or would they? Would they be able to apparate inside of a Gringott’s vault in order to follow the taboo? Would they even hear it; were the walls of this vault enchanted in a way that would prevent the curse from being triggered in the outside world?

Harry thought through the different possible outcomes, though his head throbbed and it was hard to focus. Scenario one: it wouldn’t work in here and nothing would happen. Scenario two: it would trigger something but the Snatchers wouldn’t be able to locate him—or get in here, at least—because he was in Gringotts. Scenario three: they could hear the taboo and were able to apparate here, and then… Harry would be in a vault with several armed Snatchers.

 _But I could surprise them,_ Harry thought, surely on the brink of lunacy now. He glanced up at the fake sword of Gryffindor.

He did not have a wand, no… but he had a weapon.

Harry stood atop a chest and grabbed the hilt of the sword, which was very warm to the touch. He swung it around a few times for good measure, then went and crouched behind a large armoire that was full of ancient, gaudy robes. Harry wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and tightened his grip.

He swallowed thickly, his throat burning painfully as he did. He gave the cup one last glance before committing. Yes, he would take his chances, horrible though they may be, with a few Snatchers to being in this vault with the horcrux even a moment longer. If he was going to die—and he would, if he stayed here—then he was going to go out fighting.

Without attempting to overthink it anymore, Harry lifted the sword, ready to strike from his hiding place, and uttered the taboo word.

“Voldemort.”

There was a beat of silence. Harry held his breath as he waited for them to appear, hoping, prepared to attack like a madman—

The sword burst apart in his hands, suddenly white-hot and scalding. Harry screamed and dropped it and not one, but three swords fell to the floor, the metal clattering loudly in his ears. Harry stumbled backward, welts forming on his hands in seconds. His palms blistered and trembled. Harry looked about the vault with his heart thundering in his ears.

The Snatchers didn’t come.

Harry swore, angry but unsurprised—he had a feeling it wouldn’t work in here; the ancient Gringotts vaults were protected by magic much older and more powerful than a newly established taboo, Harry was sure.

All he had managed to do was anger the horcrux again.

Harry’s hands began to tremble even more violently as the blisters grew worse. The pain was terrible. His head pounded and his vision blurred behind his glasses, which sat off-kilter on his face. Harry’s fingers hurt too badly to consider trying to right them; it felt like they were on fire with the pain.

“Drink.”

The voice was not a whisper this time, but harsh, cold command. Harry blearily looked at the cup, and though his vision was hazy, it remained in focus, crystal clear. The water sparkled like it was made of diamonds, ethereal looking as it shone from within the contents of the gilded goblet.

There was no help for it. The primal demand for water took over, and Harry was kneeling on the floor beside the cup before he could give it another moment of consideration. His burnt skin hurt terribly when he touched the metal handles, but Harry hardly noticed when the impossibly sweet, cold water touched his lips.

Harry drank deeply, the wild thirst having him feeling deranged. The water was gone far too soon. “More,” he croaked, and to his delight, the cup was refilled.

Harry drank, and drank, and drank.

He did not know how many minutes passed, but Harry drank until he was satisfied, until his burning thirst was finally quenched. It was the difference between night and day. His head cleared and his hands no longer burned…

Stunned, Harry set the cup down, staring at his now pristine-looking palms in awe. They were completely healed.

Just what the hell was he drinking…?

Laughter, soft and much more… lively reverberated in his mind. Harry’s stomach dropped as he stared at the currently empty goblet. How much had he guzzled down in his frenzy just now? What kind of debt had he just racked up?

He didn’t have long to ponder it. Harry’s eyelids fluttered and shut against his will, and soon he was drifting somewhere—backwards, sideways, down…

This time, the world that constructed itself around him was small and ominously lit. Purple light bathed one side of the dark, stone-walled room, while the other glowed with a strange dimness that flickered. Fire. Enchanted fires—one violet, one black. They consumed two entryways on opposite sides of each other. And there, in the center of the room, was his much younger self.

Harry knew exactly where, and when, he was.

He was eleven years old and they were through the trapdoor, in one of the very last corridors. Seven bottles sat on a table next to where his younger memory stood, a child in robes that were torn from battling Devil’s Snare. He was alone, which meant that Hermione must have just left, drinking the contents of the rounded bottle before escaping back through the purple flames, going to send word for help.

This was the first time he had come face-to-face with Lord Voldemort.

Harry shut his eyes and willed the memory to stop, to be returned to the vault, but it was no use. “No!” he shouted, shaking his head. But it was hopeless. He knew it.

The child-Harry picked up the smallest bottle, which had barely a gulp left in it. “Here I come,” he said, then drained what liquid remained.

Horrified but unable to do anything else, Harry followed his memory through the black flames.

“You!” the child-Harry shouted.

Quirrell smiled. “Me,” he said calmly.

Harry watched, wide-eyed and unwittingly fascinated as his younger self conversed with Quirrell, who explained, quite conversationally, that it was not Snape who had tried to kill him after all.

“And what a waste of time,” he said, after revealing how many times Snape had tried to save him, not murder him, “when after all that, I’m going to kill you tonight.”

Quirrell snapped his fingers, and the young Harry was instantly bound with ropes that sprang from the ground. “You’re much too nosy to live, Potter…”

Harry looked everywhere in the final corridor as Quirrell talked, but did not see any hazy, potential apparitions of Tom Riddle anywhere—just himself and Quirrell, with his massive purple turban and his crooked smile.

“The mirror is the key to finding the stone…”

Quirrell had turned away from the bound Harry, and was now examining the mirror keenly.

“I saw you and Snape in the forest—” the child-Harry blurted out.

“Yes,” said Quirrell, walking around the mirror to look at the backside. “He was on to me by that time, trying to find out how far I’d got. He suspected me all along. Tried to frighten me — as though he could, when I had Lord Voldemort on my side…”

Quirrell came back out from behind the mirror and stared into the silver, reflective surface with hunger in his eyes.

“I see the Stone, I’m presenting it to my master... but where is it?”

Harry watched his younger self struggle against the ropes to no avail. “But Snape always seemed to hate me so much,” he said.

“Oh, he does,” said Quirrell. “Heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn’t you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you _dead._ ”

“But I heard you a few days ago, sobbing—I thought Snape was threatening you…”

“Sometimes,” Quirrell said, a flicker of fear appearing in in his eyes for the first time, “I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions. He is a great wizard and I am weak…”

“You mean he was there in the classroom with you?” the child-Harry gasped.

“He is with me wherever I go,” said Quirrell. “I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it…”

Harry shuddered, as the memory suddenly flickered in an ominous way at those words. He turned and looked around the room, but still he saw nothing. 

Quirrell cursed under his breath, drawing Harry’s attention back to him.

“I don’t understand… is the Stone _inside_ the mirror? Should I break it?”

The child Harry tripped and fell over—trying to edge closer to the mirror and failing, Harry recalled. Quirrell ignored him and continued to talk to himself.

“What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, Master!” he cried.

“Use the boy,” answered a high, cold voice. “Use the boy…”

Quirrell rounded on Harry. “Yes. Potter, come here.”

He clapped his hands once—and Harry couldn’t help but appreciate the theatricality with which Quirrell performed wandless magic—and the ropes binding the child-Harry fell off him, and he got to his feet.

“Come here,” Quirrell repeated. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”

His memory-self walked toward Quirrell, who moved close behind him at once.

Harry watched his reflection, curious as to whether or not he would see now what he saw then—and was unsurprised when he did. Unsurprised, yet disheartened.

If _he_ could see what was happening in the mirror, then he had a dark feeling the horcrux could, too.

The child’s reflection was pale and scared-looking at first. But a moment later, it smiled. It put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone, then winked and put the Stone back in its pocket. And Harry knew that, in that moment, the Philosopher’s Stone had appeared there in reality.

“Well?” snapped Quirrell. “What do you see?”

“I see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore,” his memory invented. “I’ve won the House Cup for Gryffindor.”

Quirrell swore again. “Get out of the way,” he snarled.

The child-Harry stepped aside, and then that cold voice spoke again:

“He lies… He lies… Let me speak to him, face-to-face…”

“Master, you are not strong enough!”

“I have strength enough… for this…”

Harry watched, feeling as transfixed with horror as he had then as Quirrell reached up and began to unwrap his turban. The fabric fell away, and Quirrell slowly turned around. The terrible face of Lord Voldemort stared back at him.

Chalky and white, with small, black veins like spider’s legs bleeding along his skull. His eyes were glaring and red, and his nostrils were two thin slits, just like a snake’s.

“Harry Potter… See what I have become?” said the face of Lord Voldemort. “Mere shadow and vapor… I have form only when I can share another’s body… but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds. Unicorn blood has strengthened me, these past weeks; you saw faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the forest… and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own. Now, why don’t you give me that Stone in your pocket?”

The child-Harry stumbled backward.

“Don’t be a fool,” snarled Voldemort. “Better save your own life and join me, or you’ll meet the same end as your parents… They died begging me for mercy…”

“Liar!” the child-Harry roared, and Harry was filled with the very same rage.

“You _were_ a liar,” Harry added. He was glaring at the contorted face of Lord Voldemort, who was now smiling sardonically… but speaking to the voyeuristic horcrux who he knew was listening.

Quirrell was walking backwards towards his memory-self so that Voldemort still faced him. “How touching,” Voldemort hissed. “I always value bravery. Yes, boy, your parents were brave… I killed your father first, and he put up a courageous fight, but your mother needn’t have died. She was

trying to protect you… Now give me the Stone, unless you want her to have died in vain.”

“Never!”

The child-Harry sprinted toward the flame door, but Voldemort screamed “Seize him!” and the next second Quirrell’s hand closed on his wrist. The young Harry yelled and Quirrell let go of him as though he had burned him—which he had, Harry now knew. Quirrell’s fingers began to blister much in the same way Harry’s just had from holding the cursed sword.

“Seize him! SEIZE HIM!” shrieked Voldemort again, and Quirrell lunged, knocking the child-Harry down, landing on top of him and wrapping both hands around Harry’s neck. Quirrell howled in agony.

“Master, I cannot hold him—my hands—my hands!”

Quirrell, though pinning Harry to the ground with his knees, let go of his neck and stared, bewildered, at his own palms. They were raw and red.

“Then kill him, fool, and be done!” screeched Voldemort.

Quirrell raised his hand to cast a curse, but the child-Harry reached up and grabbed Quirrell’s face.

“AAAARGH!”

Quirrell rolled off him, his face blistering just like his hands. Harry grinned with pride as he watched his former self jump to his feet, catching Quirrell by the arm and hanging on. Quirrell screamed and tried to throw him off, but the child, most impressively, held on with a savage grip. Quirrell’s terrible shrieks and Voldemort’s yells filled the air.

“KILL HIM! KILL HIM! KILL HIM”

And then it happened—Harry’s small body went limp, but it was too late for Quirrell. The former Defense Against the Dark Arts professor deteriorated before his eyes, turning to ash and dust, leaving nothing but his robes and the unraveled turban behind. A far less human-sounding scream assaulted Harry’s ears, and the silvery-gray waif that was Lord Voldemort ripped through the air and vanished from sight.

Harry braced himself, prepared for the memory to come to an abrupt end, for this was as much as he could possibly remember.

It didn’t.

Everything froze, suddenly and absolutely. The dusty remains of Quirrell, which had stirred in the air a moment before, stopped. The child-Harry went so still that he didn’t even seem to be breathing. Even the black flames became motionless, no longer licking at the passageway that led back to the room with the bottles. It was like someone had hit the pause button on a movie… one that he, Harry, was trapped in. 

Harry moved slowly through the room that was now eerily quiet. It was the sort of silent that was deafening, amplifying the sounds of his ragged breathing and heavily beating heart. He stepped over the body of his memory-self, skirting cautiously around the fallen robes of Quirrell. It felt like his every movement was being closely watched.

“…Hello?” he called hesitantly, unsure how to address the horcrux that was obviously doing this. “Show yourself,” he said, trying to sound confident though he was anything but. 

There was no response. Harry frowned as he looked about, unsure what it was he should be doing.

Eventually—inevitably, perhaps—he found himself edging towards the Mirror of Erised. Harry wasn’t sure what he would see in it—his child-self, like in this memory? His parents, as he had seen multiple times before? Yet as he drew nearer, still off to one side and therefore unable to find out what the mirror would show him, Harry stopped. His blood ran cold at what he saw there.

The glass, which had reflected everything perfectly in the active memory, was now empty. It showed nothing in it at all, not even the room.

Just… darkness.

A shiver tore its way up Harry’s spine. He instantly turned away, heading towards the frozen black flames on the other side of the room. Maybe he could leave this memory—this moment?—by simply… leaving it.

The moment he drew near to the door, the flames erupted, flaring back to life. Harry jumped away before he could be burnt again.

“Oh no,” said a voice behind him. “Not yet. Not nearly yet.”

Harry turned around, facing the direction where it had emanated from. It was not Voldemort’s high hiss, nor was it Quirrell’s casual voice…

It was the horcrux.

“Where are you?” Harry said, coming back into the room. Once he was further from the flames, they went still again.

“Come closer.”

Harry knew, even without the horcrux telling him. It was the obvious answer. Slowly, with his hands balled into fists as his sides, Harry approached the mirror. 

His own reflection greeted him, standing alone in the non-existent world of darkness. Harry Potter as he was now—shirtless, pale, thin, and with dark, wild hair that had grown so long it now grazed his shoulders. The lightning bolt scar seemed more vivid than it was before, and his eyes—bright green and piercing—stared back at him from behind his glasses.

But it was immediately clear that there was something very off about it.

It smiled at him, much in the way his young reflection had in the memory, but it was a more sinister, more devious grin. It tilted its head of its own accord, and the intensity of its stare was so great that Harry felt like it was seeing straight into his soul. 

Its crooked smile widened. “Hello, Harry Potter,” it said. 

Harry clenched his jaw and gathered all his courage. He didn't care that he'd sworn he wouldn't say it again. If the horcrux was going to call him by his name, then Harry would return the courtesy. 

“Hello, Tom Riddle.”


	4. A memory and a memory

It didn’t reject the name.

His reflection continued to smile, a sardonic grin that Harry was certain had never before graced his features. It—he?—looked… happy.

Far too happy.

“Welcome to your mind,” the horcrux said, his smile widening even still. Harry barely repressed a shiver. It was beyond unnerving to hear his own voice, spoken from his own, disheveled reflection, speaking in a tone that was lilting and low.

Harry glared, masking his fear with anger. “Let me out,” he said.

“Of your mind?” the horcrux said. His eyes—Harry’s eyes—flashed with amusement from behind his off-kilter glasses. From behind a pane of cursed glass.

“Of this memory,” Harry said through gritted teeth. His heart was pounding with rage and fear but he held it all back, speaking as levelly as he could. “Of this vault.”

“Of _my_ vault,” the horcrux replied smoothly. His tone was condescending, like he was correcting a small child’s obvious error in language.

Harry scoffed. “Last I checked, we broke into the vault of the Lestrange family, not the Riddle’s.”

The horcrux’s face instantly contorted—an expression of fierce, cold rage met his eyes in the mirror, and Harry could not recognize himself at all.

Harry flinched, expecting something dramatic to happen—for the lights to flash; for the enchanted, black fire that was still flickering to attack him; for the ground to shake and his scar to burn.

Nothing of the sort occurred. The horcrux’s furious expression melted away, and he was smiling again, his expression just as saccharine and dangerous as it had been before. “And how did you manage to break into my vault?” he said.

Harry decided it was wisest to not correct an insane fraction of Voldemort’s soul again on something so contrite. It was Harry’s turn to grin. “It was easy,” he said vaguely.

The horcrux’s smile fell a bit, replaced by something more serious. Calculating. Like he was trying to tell if Harry was lying or not.

Which _of course_ he was, and _of course_ he could tell that because whatever form he was currently in, _this was still Tom Riddle!_ Harry quickly looked away, breaking eye contact with his reflection and looking towards the fire. It was the only other thing in this memory that was moving. His child-self was eerily still on the floor, frozen in time. What remained of Quirrell’s ashes were suspended bits of dust in a stagnant wind.

“Easy,” the horcrux repeated. Harry did not look at him. “I see… Perhaps it _was_ easy for you... Tell me, how did you manage to cause such harm to Lord Voldemort, Harry Potter?”

Harry dared to look back at the mirror, seeing that the horcrux’s face held no amusement now. He swallowed hard as he considered how to answer this. What exactly did this horcrux already know?

Well, it had seen this memory. It had seen what the main portion of his soul would one day become—a waif; little more than a spirit-like succubus leaching the life from others. It had heard Quirrell’s story about meeting Lord Voldemort on his travels. And it had seen him, Harry, as a mere child, absolutely annihilating Quirrell with nothing but his hands.

That, Harry realized, must have looked… impressive. And frightening to someone like Tom Riddle, loathe as he would undoubtedly be to admit such a thing. Harry doubted that this version of Riddle had any idea as to how someone could burn another human alive with just a touch—especially such a young child.

His reflection was staring at him, eerily wide-eyed as it waited for a response. He was so still now that Harry might have thought that he too had frozen, another motionless moment in this memory.

“Some say,” Harry began slowly, “that I have power… That I am destined. Fated.”

The reflection blinked once, slowly. Harry’s own eyes bored into his, piercing and bright. “Destined for what?” he asked softly.

“Why don’t you guess?”

Harry wasn’t sure where, exactly, he was going with this, but he thought it was best to keep the horcrux confused and curious for as long as he could. Considering he had already ruined his chances of endearing himself to him, being interesting enough not to be immediately killed was about the only plan he had.

His reflection glared, a venomous glint in his eyes. “You want to play games with _me_ , Harry Potter?” he hissed. “Me, the greatest and most powerful dark wizard of all time?”

Harry couldn’t help it—a laugh escaped his throat, short and unbidden. The horcrux continued to glare. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Harry said, smirking, “but you and I have a bit of a history, Tom Riddle… we’ve run into each other quite a few times, actually. Much like a game. And spoiler alert…”

He nodded towards what remained of Quirrell—a stagnant, whirling cloud of ashes.

“I usually win.”

The reflection moved so quickly Harry barely processed it—suddenly he had sprung forward, closer to the glass, one hand pressed against it hard like it was not a mirror at all, but nothing more than a thin, fragile plane separating the two of them.

“Your destiny was sealed the moment you met me,” the horcrux seethed. “You are playing _my_ game now, so allow me to inform you of the very unfair and very real circumstances you now face. You are in _my_ vault—an ancient space imbued with the oldest, darkest of magic, and I have felt and gathered it all. I am in every cursed, golden coin and in every jewel. I own every corner, every fiber, every brushstroke.”

He paused. The anger was still burning in his eyes when he smiled again. “I am a horcrux, as you somehow seem aware—a fascinating discovery you have that I am looking forward to unearthing. I am therefore immortal and limitless but you, Harry Potter, are a mere human. You cry and bleed and sweat. You cave to human impulses and you will drink. And every time you do, you sign away a bit of yourself to me. If you know of horcruxes, then surely you know this. Equal exchange, Harry… I am giving you life, and you are giving me _you_. I will own you.”

“I won’t!” Harry roared. The horcrux only grinned. “I won’t do it! I won’t drink anymore! I’ll sit in this stupid vault and die before that happens!”

“Of course you will drink again,” the horcrux purred. “Human impulse is too strong; true thirst is impossible to ignore when there is—what did you so poetically call it?— _Horcrux juice_ in the room.” His eyes flashed in dark, dangerous amusement; Harry felt his face burn in a way that had nothing to do with the heat.

“Besides,” his reflection went on unabashedly, “to die would be to give up. You say you have a destiny. You won’t fulfill it if you die here, surrounded by antiques and piles of gold. Your corpse would just become one more treasure locked away in a vault in Gringotts, never to see the light of day again…”

The horcrux’s expression had taken a slight turn at the end of his little speech—he no longer looked solely malicious, but… distant.

Harry’s mind reeled.

“…And do _you_ want to see the light of day again?” Harry asked slowly. Carefully.

The horcrux’s vindictive smile swiftly returned. “I want to see many things,” he said. “And I will. You owe it to me, Harry Potter. You drank deeply for someone who would prefer death… and your wounds, I healed your blistering hands, too. How generous of me. _Such_ a debt to repay.”

“I—what— _you_ were the one who gave me the blistering wounds in the first place! When you made the fake sword explode!”

“I don’t make the rules, Harry.”

“Who the fuck does, then!?”

“Fate.”

The reflection’s head tilted to one side. The light caught in Harry’s own eyes, making them look unnaturally green.

“…and it favors _me_.”

Those eyes flashed red.

Harry saw himself for a moment with crimson eyes and the vision in the mirror stilled his heart. The reflection’s hand, which was still pressed against the glass, pushed harder still. The mirror cracked and with it the air, space, time.

Harry’s vision split and the still world around them divided in a surreal, unfathomable way. Quirrell’s remains went in one direction; Harry’s child-self went in another. Harry himself fell into the chasm between the two, descending into a darkness so abruptly that he didn’t have time to scream.

It was like someone had tossed him and all his thoughts into a giant, metaphorical tornado. But there was one strange current among the many whirling winds that whipped about; and somehow, without seeing it or being told what it was, Harry understood what was happening. The horcrux, non-corporeal and an invasion in his mind, searching. Hunting.

Harry tried to fight it, but the force was too strong. It was a pull on his thoughts and Harry was left to wallow in the wind. A million echoes of memories long past reverberated around him, loud and soft, screamed and whispered, until finally, after a struggle against a horcrux that was hardly a struggle at all, one particular shout stood out from the rest—

“Come back! All right, I lied!”

Harry was beyond flustered when he landed in Hogwarts.

“I was annoyed you woke me up! The password’s still ‘tapeworm’!”

The voice that had finally snapped him into a concrete memory was none other than the Fat Lady, looking disgruntled from where she sat in her portrait. And there was Harry himself, looking not much younger but much cleaner and well-groomed than he was now, ignoring her as he rushed away, looking excited.

The real Harry’s heart plummeted as it dawned on him just what memory this was. He tried to resist it again, tried to simply stay where he was, next to the Fat Lady, but it was no use. That unnerving pull tugged at him, and Harry had no choice but to follow his memory down the hall.

Right to Dumbledore’s office.

“Toffee éclairs,” Harry’s memory said to Dumbledore’s gargoyle, which leapt aside, permitting both Harry’s past-self and his current self entrance onto the spiral staircase.

“Enter,” came Dumbledore’s voice when the past-Harry knocked. He sounded exhausted. Harry’s heart ached at the sound.

Dumbledore was dead…

Past-Harry pushed open the door, and there was Dumbledore’s office with all his silver, whirring trinkets. Harry tried again to leave the memory—to avoid allowing the horcrux to witness this most pivotal of moments—but it had no effect. He could not leave; that indescribable tug on his soul was too strong.

 _Equal exchange,_ murmured that silky voice in his ear. Harry whirled on the spot, but of course, there was no one there.

“Good gracious, Harry,” said the memory of Dumbledore, causing Harry to turn. “To what do I owe this very late pleasure?”

“Sir—I’ve got it. I’ve got the memory from Slughorn.”

Past-Harry pulled out the tiny glass bottle and showed it to Dumbledore. For a moment or two, the now-deceased headmaster looked stunned. Then his face split in a wide smile.

“Harry, this is spectacular news! Very well done indeed! I knew you could do it!”

He took Slughorn’s memory in his uninjured hand—blimey, Harry had forgotten just how awful it looked—and strode over to the cabinet where he kept the Pensieve.

“And now,” said Dumbledore, placing the stone basin upon his desk and emptying the contents of the bottle into it. “Now, at last, we shall see. Harry, quickly...”

Past-Harry bowed over the Pensieve, and it was easily the strangest sensation in the world, witnessing a memory of a memory unfold in his mind while feeling the dark presence of a fraction of Tom Riddle as a spectator to it all, along for the ride.

The new vision showed Horace Slughorn’s office many years before. And there was the much younger Slughorn, surely very familiar to the goblet horcrux—a professor with thick, shiny, straw-colored hair and a gingery-blond mustache. He was sitting in the comfortable winged armchair in his office, his feet resting upon a velvet pouffe, a small glass of wine in one hand while the other rummaged in a box of crystalized pineapple.

And there were the half-dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Riddle himself in the midst of them, Marvolo’s gold-and-black ring gleaming on his finger.

The memory of Dumbledore landed beside the memory of Harry just as the memory of Riddle asked, “Sir, is it true that Professor Merrythought is retiring?”

“Tom, Tom, if I knew I couldn’t tell you,” said Slughorn, wagging his finger reprovingly at Riddle, though winking at the same time. “I must say, I’d like to know where you get your information, boy, more knowledgeable than half the staff, you are.”

Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks. Harry felt a deep wave of nausea. 

“What with your uncanny ability to know things you shouldn’t and your careful flattery of the people who matter—thank you for the pineapple, by the way, you’re quite right, it is my favorite—”

Several of the boys tittered again.

“—I confidently expect you to rise to Minister of Magic within twenty years. Fifteen, if you keep sending me pineapple, I have _excellent_ contacts at the Ministry.”

Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again. Harry's stomach was churning in his gut and he tried again, uselessly, to leave. The pull wouldn’t allow him to move even close to the door of Slughorn’s office. A laugh echoed softly in the back of Harry’s mind.

“I don’t know that politics would suit me, sir,” past-Riddle said when the tittering had died away. “I don’t have the right kind of background, for one thing.”

A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Harry glared at the supposedly demure memory of Riddle, though he knew that fabrication was not the real enemy here.

“Nonsense,” said Slughorn briskly, “couldn’t be plainer you come from decent Wizarding stock, abilities like yours. No, you’ll go far, Tom, I’ve never been wrong about a student yet.”

The small golden clock standing upon Slughorn’s desk chimed eleven o’clock behind him and he looked around.

“Good gracious, is it that time already? You’d better get going, boys, or we’ll all be in trouble. Lestrange, I want your essay by tomorrow or it’s detention. Same goes for you, Avery.”

One by one, the boys filed out of the room. Slughorn heaved himself out of his armchair and carried his empty glass over to his desk. A movement behind him made him look around; past-Riddle was still standing there.

“Look sharp, Tom, you don’t want to be caught out of bed out of hours, and you a prefect...”

“Sir, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Ask away, then, m’boy, ask away...”

“Sir, I wondered what you know about... about Horcruxes?”

Harry’s heart froze as he watched, unable to escape. He could feel a kind of vibrating energy from the back of his mind, too. The cup, that bastard, learning now how Harry knew exactly what a horcrux was in the first place. Learning that he, Harry, had been working with Dumbledore, stealing memories from his old Professor of a young and curious Tom Riddle…

Slughorn stared at his favorite student, his thick fingers absentmindedly caressing the stem of his wine glass.

“Project for Defense Against the Dark Arts, is it?”

But Harry could tell then and he could tell now that Slughorn knew perfectly well that this was not schoolwork.

“Not exactly, sir,” said Riddle. “I came across the term while reading and I didn’t fully understand it.”

“No... well... you’d be hard-pushed to find a book at Hogwarts that’ll give you details on Horcruxes, Tom, that’s very Dark stuff, very Dark indeed,” said Slughorn.

“But you obviously know all about them, sir? I mean, a wizard like you — sorry, I mean, if you can’t tell me, obviously — I just knew if anyone could tell me, you could—so I just thought I’d ask—”

Harry still appreciated Riddle’s technique. His hesitancy, his casual tone, his careful flattery. None of it was overdone; he was a true master of manipulation.

“Well,” said Slughorn, not looking at Riddle, but fiddling with the ribbon on top of his box of crystalized pineapple, “well, it can’t hurt to give you an overview, of course. Just so that you understand the term. A Horcrux is the word used for an object in which a person has concealed part of their soul.”

“I don’t quite understand how that works, though, sir,” said Riddle.

“Clearly you do _now_ ,” Harry spat, interrupting the memory. The horcrux didn’t answer him.

“Well, you split your soul, you see,” Slughorn was saying, “and hide part of it in an object outside the body. Then, even if one’s body is attacked or destroyed, one cannot die, for part of the soul remains earthbound and undamaged. But of course, existence in such a form...”

“Guess you saw what that looked like, too,” Harry once more snarled, adding his unnecessary commentary out of spite. Still the horcrux ignored him.

“...few would want it, Tom, very few. Death would be preferable.”

“How do you split your soul?” Riddle’s memory asked.

“Well,” said Slughorn uncomfortably, “you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature.”

“But how do you do it?”

“By an act of evil — the supreme act of evil. By committing murder. Killing rips the soul apart. The wizard intent upon creating a Horcrux would use the damage to his advantage: He would encase the torn portion—”

“Encase? But how—?”

“There is a spell, do not ask me, I don’t know!” said Slughorn, shaking his head. “Do I look as though I have tried it—do I look like a killer?”

“No, sir, of course not,” said Riddle quickly. “I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to offend...”

“Not at all, not at all, not offended,” said Slughorn gruffly. “It’s natural to feel some curiosity about these things… Wizards of a certain caliber have always been drawn to that aspect of magic.”

“Yes, sir,” said Riddle. “What I don’t understand, though—just out of curiosity—I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn’t it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn’t seven—?”

“Merlin’s beard, Tom!” yelped Slughorn. “Seven! Isn’t it bad enough to think of killing one person? And in any case, bad enough to divide the soul... but to rip it into seven pieces…”

Slughorn looked deeply troubled now. “Of course,” he muttered, “this is all hypothetical, what we’re discussing, isn’t it? All academic...”

“Yes, sir, of course,” said Riddle quickly.

“But all the same, Tom... keep it quiet, what I’ve told—that’s to say, what we’ve discussed. People wouldn’t like to think we’ve been chatting about Horcruxes. It’s a banned subject at Hogwarts, you know... Dumbledore’s particularly fierce about it...”

The memory of Dumbledore’s face was hard and cold.

“I won’t say a word, sir,” said Riddle, and he left. Harry once more glimpsed his face, which was full of that wild happiness it had worn when he had first found out that he was a wizard. The sort of happiness that did not enhance his handsome features, but made them less human, more demonic...

“Thank you, Harry,” said Dumbledore’s memory quietly. “Let us go...”

Harry thought that maybe he would be able to escape the memory then, to return to the vault before Dumbledore’s office rematerialized before him. He tried, and for a moment he thought it might work—the pull that held him here was not as strong, and he heard a hissing of disapproval in his ear.

“Not yet, Harry,” said the horcrux, and Harry was swept back into the memory. Dumbledore was sitting down behind his desk; past-Harry sat too and they all waited for Dumbledore to speak.

“I have been hoping for this piece of evidence for a very long time,” said Dumbledore after a stretch of contemplative silence. “It confirms the theory on which I have been working, it tells me that I am right, and also how very far there is still to go...”

Harry’s heart pounded was pounding with dread again. He did not want this horcrux to learn what he had learned, to know the extent of what he, Harry, knew about Voldemort's fractured soul…

“Well, Harry,” said Dumbledore after another pause, “I am sure you understood the significance of what we just heard. At the same age as you are now, give or take a few months, Tom Riddle was doing all he could to find out how to make himself immortal.”

“You think he succeeded then, sir?” asked Harry’s memory. “He made a Horcrux? And that’s why he didn’t die when he attacked me? He had a Horcrux hidden somewhere? A bit of his soul was safe?”

“No shit,” the real Harry muttered venomously. The horcrux again did not add his own comment; Harry was sure he was paying rapt attention to the Headmaster with his cryptic words and blackened hand.

“A bit... or more,” said Dumbledore. “You heard Voldemort: What he particularly wanted from Horace was an opinion on what would happen to the wizard who created more than one Horcrux, what would happen to the wizard so determined to evade death that he would be prepared to murder many times, rip his soul repeatedly, so as to store it in many, separately concealed Horcruxes. No book would have given him that information. As far as I know—as far, I am sure, as Voldemort knew—no wizard had ever done more than tear his soul in two.”

Dumbledore paused for a moment, deep in thought. Harry tried again to rip himself away from the memory, and this time, it really was working. As he willed it to vanish the scene too began to deteriorate—the air was becoming foggier, murkier. Much like Slughorn’s memory, which he had purposefully tampered with himself, had looked. 

“Four years ago, I received what I considered certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul,” came Dumbledore’s voice, yet it was softer now, distorted.

“No!” the horcrux roared in his ear, but Harry grinned. He was regaining control again—this equivocal exchange was nearly over, his current debt nearly paid.

“Where?” asked Harry’s memory. “How?”

“You handed it to me, Harry,” said Dumbledore. His voice was fading; it was the barest echo. “The diary, Riddle’s diary… the one giving instructions on how to reopen the Chamber of Secrets.”

Harry finally managed to wrench his way out of his own mind.

He landed face-first in the Lestrange vault, right on top of one of the piles of gold. It was far from the cushiest landing he could have had. Harry’s whole body hurt as he righted himself—but he was at least thankful that it had not exploded into a billion more pieces of fake, burning gold. Now that he knew Riddle was fully capable of tapping into the curses that already existing here, Harry was determined to touch things as little as possible.

Still, the heat in the vault was scalding. Harry was sweating hard, and already his mouth was dry again.

He turned. There was the cup, innocent-looking as ever.

Full of tempting water.


	5. The Devil on the Island

_Well… this isn’t fucking good._

This thought rang loudly in Harry’s head as he stared at the goblet, his mind and body both reeling from falling back into reality so abruptly.

It knew.

The goblet horcrux now knew that he, Harry, had found the diary, and that he had delivered it straight into the hands of Albus Dumbledore. Now that it—he? He, definitely he, without a doubt _he_ —knew this, then he surely had come to the conclusion that the diary was no-longer. Whether he believed Dumbledore himself destroyed it or that Harry had a hand in its demise hardly mattered. The goblet knew that Harry was hunting horcruxes with his former Transfiguration professor, and that one of his fellow soul fragments was now almost certainly destroyed.

Harry tried to put himself in the state of mind of the goblet. If he were this version of Tom Riddle and he had just witnessed that, what would he think? How would he feel?

 _I would be… undeniably afraid,_ Harry thought. _Afraid, genuinely, because if the diary was destroyed that means others could have been too. The goblet knows about the ring and maybe the locket too, because those were made either before him or around the same time. I would be wondering about those... and I would be afraid of the answer._

 _Which he should be,_ Harry concluded in his musings, full of ruthless vindication. The ring _was_ destroyed. The locket _was_ destroyed. As far as the goblet knew, he could be the last horcrux left.

The smugness and pride that came with this comprehension didn’t last long. The temperature in the room escalated suddenly; Harry could _see_ the radiant heat exuding from the mounds of gold and antiques. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and swallowed hard, his throat burning, hot and dry.

Fear could only make a horcrux infinitely more dangerous. 

Harry leaned against the door to the vault, never taking his eyes off the cup. Looking at it was the strangest thing; in the hazy heat of the treasure-filled room it alone remained crystal clear, unblurred and unmarred. The water within it was so sparkly and crisp-looking that it was nothing sort of magical.

Suddenly, Harry’s scar prickled. It was a lightning fast sensation; an emotion that was not his own scouring across his mind.

Shock. Wherever he was Lord Voldemort had very abruptly, very unwittingly, experienced something that caused him extreme shock—so much so that, had he been practicing Occlumency against Harry, his defenses had momentarily fallen.

Harry closed his eyes and tried to seek out the sensation again, to see from the Dark Lord’s eyes, to learn _something_ —but it was no use. The feeling of surprise left as quickly as it went, and there was no follow-up emotion from which Harry could glean any other useful information.

“Fuck!” Harry swore again. He beat his fists against the ancient vault’s door. “Fucking… fuck!”

He could think of a few things that the Dark Lord could learn right now that might shock him that greatly… and none of them bode well for Harry.

Had he just been told of what happened at Gringotts? Had Hermione and Ron been captured and brought before him, doomed?

Did he know that he, Harry, was currently trapped within a vault—a helpless prisoner simply waiting to be murdered?

Harry turned and faced the goblet again. A new, and possibly even more insane, tactic formed in his mind.

 _Time to make a deal with the devil,_ Harry thought, then walked straight up to the cup. He stared down at it, making eye contact with the deceptively friendly looking badger.

“You don’t want to die,” Harry said firmly.

The lights flickered again. A gust of dry, hot wind blew in the vaults, knocking the frayed fabric from the ominous black painting in the corner.

 _Touchy_ , Harry thought but didn’t voice. “I didn’t mean that as an insult,” he said instead. “I meant it as a simple fact. You don’t want to die.”

“Neither do _you_ ,” whispered that slip of a voice, a ghost in his ear, the tone laced with iciness.

Harry tried not to shudder. “You also don’t want to be trapped in here forever, do you?” he said.

Silence. Harry grit his teeth while he waited for a response, but quickly became impatient. “Well?” he said. His dry throat hurt. Harry found his focus shifting from the badger’s face to the water within the cup; tantalizing, dazzling, _wet_. “Do you?”

“Drink.”

Harry bit his bottom lip. He was so _thirsty_ but he would not give away any more of himself to this horcrux. “No,” Harry said. He tried to wet his lips again, but he might as well have been licking sand. “Talk to me like this. Let’s make a deal, Riddle. We can help each other.”

“Drink.”

Harry growled in frustration and, without consciously deciding to do so, swiped hard at the stubborn chalice. It once more went flying across the vault, slamming into a chest and skittering across the floor until it finally landed at the feet of the suit of armor.

And the _water_! It splashed across the treasure and the stone floor and immediately began to evaporate. Harry felt actual pain in his chest at the loss of it, even though he had just refused to drink a moment ago. He _wanted_ it.

Harry was immediately pulled from that thought by another sound. A deep, guttural voice that was somehow ragged and sharp at the same time, like a shard of glass being dragged across gravel.

_“Heedless…”_

It was not the voice of Tom Riddle.

Harry turned on the spot, looking wildly about for this new entity, whoever or _whatever_ it was. It came from the corner. Harry’s heart stopped at the conclusion he came to.

The painting.

There was nothing in it still; it remained a black and endless void within a silver frame, but somehow, it had changed. Harry knew. He knew with a gut-clenching truth that it was the source of that voice, even though he could see no figure within it.

“Wh-who’s there?” Harry called.

A cold, raspy laugh answered him, but something about it was not quite… human. The frame remained black and still.

Harry did shudder then; a strange thing to do considering how very hot and sweaty he was. He thought about going to where the tattered fabric had fallen and covering the painting back up again, but the mere notion of getting that close to it was enough to make him pause. He didn’t want to go anywhere near that cursed work of art.

Before he could work up the courage to even try, the screeching of metal against metal made Harry jump and whip around again. The suit of armor’s helmet had pivoted, once more facing him and looking as though there was someone real standing within it. It stared at him with no eyes, no soul.

Harry knew only one thing in that moment: he wanted to get out of this vault, immediately, no matter what the costs.

Noticing that the goblet was no longer on the floor where he’d chucked it, Harry turned to where he knew it would be. Back to its favored spot, right in the center of the room… only now it was empty.

Harry’s throat burned in instant, hot protest but he said, “Great. Good. That makes it easier to focus. Now let’s talk.”

No answer. Harry’s tongue felt too big for his dry mouth and he found himself glancing, a bit madly, to where the water had spilled just a minute earlier. It was long gone, evaporated in the heat of the room, but still he looked around like he might find a wayward drop.

“Say something,” Harry said, forcing his attention back to the goblet.

Nothing.

“Okay,” Harry said hoarsely. “Fine. Fine. I’ll drink if you’ll actually talk to me.”

“Beg.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. “…Beg?” he repeated dumbly.

“Yes.”

He could have died at the sheer pettiness of it.

“Really?”

Nothing.

“Really!”

Silence.

Scowling and feeling utterly at the end of his rope, Harry clenched his fists and forced himself to speak. “Please,” he said, the one word causing him almost as much agony as the thirst. “Please let me drink… so we can talk.”

His laughter was dark and lilting, so very different from whatever lurked within the painting..

“Ask,” said Riddle, “and you shall receive.”

The goblet become full of water, filling from the bottom as though there were some secret well in its depths. Harry didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the cup by its golden handles and raised it to his lips, drinking deeply.

Harry actually moaned when he drank, the cool, crisp water was so good. He drank and drank and though he knew the goblet logically should have been empty many times over, he continued to drink. He couldn’t stop. It was paradise on his parched tongue and he _drank_.

“Yes, Harry,” came his voice, purring in his ear. “Drink. A little more.”

He did. Harry drank until, quite suddenly, the cup ran dry. Harry reluctantly lowered it, wiping his blissfully moist lips with the back of his hand. He was panting; he had been drinking so deeply that he had been holding his breath. He caught his distorted reflection in the concaved gold and almost screamed.

It wasn’t himself he saw there.

There was a flash of red eyes and a crooked smile and then suddenly there was nothing at all as the world fell into blackness once more.

Harry was spiraling in a whirlwind of memories, of his tempest mind. Thoughts and voices swirled and roared around him, and when he landed, it was, perhaps, in the most horrific place in the world.

The cave.

Harry was chilled to his core at the sight of it. Even more disorienting was that he was not at the cave’s entrance, nor was he on the island in the center.

He was on the boat.

 _Alone_.

There was no Dumbledore sitting across from him. Harry was by himself on the tiny boat that, in reality, was meant to only hold one person. It had only allowed him to ride before because he was underage… but that was not the case now, it seemed, and so he was on his own.

Harry swallowed hard and gripped the edges of the boat. It rocked gently, back and forth, as it nonetheless moved forward. He looked forward with dread as it drifted. It was headed towards the island, where a dull, green glow emanated. It was a very soft source of light—Harry had to squint to see in was near darkness. It was cold. After being in the sweltering heat of the vault for so long, Harry might have welcomed the chill, but he did not. It was the kind of cold that went straight to one’s bones, and already he began to shiver slightly.

“You have been here”, said Riddle’s voice. It wasn’t in his ear this time; his voice was echoing and distant. It was also not a question. Harry didn’t see the point in denying it.

“Yes,” he answered hoarsely.

“I saw what happened. I know.”

Harry’s mind reeled. _Had_ Riddle seen what happened in the cave to him before…? Without Harry being aware of what he’d seen? Or was he lying?

“You drank and I pulled while you drank and I _know_. I don’t need your _consent_ for everything anymore, Harry… You came here. I saw it. You came with Albus Dumbledore.”

 _He could still be lying,_ Harry thought, forcing away the horror that began to manifest in his heart at the word ‘consent’. _Just trying to figure things out without having to dig for them up himself. Tricking me into telling him things myself that he isn’t quite sure of._

“He was wearing my ring.”

_He… could be hazarding a few extremely lucky guesses._

“Dumbledore is now dead… deservedly.”

“So is the ring,” Harry snapped, that small hope of Riddle’s ignorance dying out. “Deservedly.”

The boat rocked, precariously hard, nearly capsizing. Harry would have fallen into the water had he not been holding onto the sides so tightly.

“You have never learned respect, have you, Harry?”

Harry’s heart was racing with adrenaline and fear, and even though his knuckles were white with the intensity of his grip on the wood, he shrugged. “I only give respect to those who have earned it.”

“…I see.”

The boat moved on, slowly and steadily making its way towards the island. The basin was a dark, vague shape in the distance, illuminated by that low green light. Harry frowned at it. “Why did you bring me here? And… if this is my memory, why isn’t Dumbledore here? I was with him when I came…”

“Because this is not your memory.”

It was then that Harry saw it. The dark shape was not the basin at all, but something larger. Taller.

A silhouette.

“Shit,” Harry swore, the word flying out of his mouth before he could stop it. He scooted back as far as he could in the boat, like maybe he could get it to stop—or better yet, turn around—if he did. Naturally, no such thing happened.

Harry’s heart began to pound so hard he was surprised the sound of it wasn’t echoing in the cave.

“Are you afraid, Harry?”

His voice was echoing and distant because it _was_ echoing and distant, coming from there, from _him_. Harry knew his answer was supposed to be a very definitive, defiant no, or a smug _You wish_ , but he found that his own voice suddenly wasn’t cooperating. The boat edged closer and closer to the island, and as it did, the figure became clearer. A tall man in dark robes, the hood drawn. His back was to him but there was absolutely no question as to who it was.

Tom Riddle turned to face him.

Their eyes met across the dark, smooth water. Beneath the shadows cast by his hood, Harry could see the ghost of a smile begin unfold. His head tilted slightly to one side as he watched, silent. Smirking. The boat gently came to the edge of the island, then stopped. Harry didn’t move at all. He sat there, frozen, his hands still holding onto the edges of the boat for dear life.

Riddle moved with a quiet, unearthly grace as he walked towards where Harry sat, and with a fresh new thrill of horror Harry learned what the source of the light was—in this memory, it came not from a basin, but from a wand. Riddle’s wand. He held the familiar yew in one hand, its tip glowing ominously.

Riddle stopped at the island’s edge. Harry thought he felt less trapped in the vault than he did there, stuck in a small, rickety old boat on water that he knew to be full potentially murderous corpses. Riddle loomed over him and, slowly, he lowered his hood.

“Harry,” he said in that lilting voice. “How kind of you to join me.”

He was entirely, irrefutably himself now—not some momentary flash of a figure in a crowd; not an animated reflection of Harry, acting on its own. This was a young Tom Riddle towering before him, with pale skin and wavy, black hair that shone in the wand light. And those eyes, as dark and handsome as they had been when the locket had swung open. The light from his wand made his cheekbones look even higher and sharper than they probably were, and his teeth—perfectly straight and white—glowed like they were enchanted.

Still smiling, Riddle stepped closer to the water’s edge, lowering himself and extending his hand. Not the one with the wand. He had very long, elegant fingers, Harry noted blankly. He flinched when they came near him and Riddle laughed that dark laugh and it took Harry much longer than it should have to realize what was happening.

Riddle wasn’t trying to kill him. Yet.

He was offering to help him up.

“Unless you would rather stay in that boat,” Riddle said. Hand still extended, smile still in place. “And not try to strike a deal with me.”

Harry’s mind lurched back to life. Mustering all his courage, he forced himself to laugh as well. Like he was realizing just how silly he’d been to doubt the fractured Dark Lord’s extension of help. “No,” he said. “I don’t want to do that.”

Harry released his death grip on the boat. Then, holding his breath and feeling like he was about to jump headfirst into the Inferi-ridden water itself, he took Riddle’s hand.

Harry wasn’t ready for it.

Riddle helped him up and the boat bucked beneath him; Harry was certain he was about to fall backwards but Riddle pulled harder, yanking him away from the water and onto the island. Harry instead fell forward, and he might have preferred the water after all, considering what happened next. He tumbled right into Riddle, who was forced to catch him with both arms. He wrapped them around Harry’s waist and caught him like some kind of heroic prince who’d just steadied a clumsy, delicate princess. Harry’s bare chest was pressed against Riddle’s cloaked one and he was being held by him completely and when he looked up to find the Dark Lord’s face a mere inch from his Harry thought yes, he definitely would have preferred an encounter with the Inferi… or he should have at least stayed in the damn boat.

Instantly Harry tried to push him off and stand on his own, but Riddle’s grip suddenly became ironclad. That in and of itself was horrifying—wasn’t it supposed to take a long time for horcruxes to become corporate? And if what did that mean for _him_?

Was he, Harry, on the other side of reality in the Lestrange vault… dying?

“Let me—shove off!” Harry shouted, but Riddle didn’t let go. “What are you _doing_?”

“Looking,” Riddle answered nonchalantly. He was staring with an unfathomable intensity at Harry’s face, studying it in a way that made Harry’s skin crawl. “Let me look, and I’ll let you go.”

Harry had never been more unnerved in his life, but considering that there was a wand tip aimed at the back of his head (he felt it jab into his skull when he struggled), he didn’t exactly have a choice.

Riddle looked. His dark eyes scoured Harry’s face, examining his jaw, his cheeks, his eyes. He settled on his scar. That piercing gaze visibly traced the zig-zag of the lightning bolt once, twice, three times. It was hard not to spend a moment returning the favor, examining the face of Riddle himself. Even in such a dire situation, it was impossible to not notice just how… handsome Tom Riddle was. Harry’s heart was pounding like a drum in his chest; he wondered if Riddle felt it.

That intense gaze finally left his scar, his eyes meetings Harry’s again. His lashes were long and sharp, the wand light casting curved shadows across his perfectly shaped brows.

“The boy who lived,” Riddle said softly. His lips twitched. 

He let go.

Harry scrambled back away from him as far as he could, keeping only the barest distance from the water’s edge. While he didn’t love the idea of having his back to the concealed Inferi, it was far better than having his back to Riddle.

“What else have you seen?” Harry asked. He was surprised at how conversational he managed to sound, all things considered. His heart was still thundering hard.

“Of your memories? Quite a lot,” Riddle said. “Glimpses here, glimpses there… You have lived a fascinating life, Harry James Potter.”

Harry shook his head. “That doesn’t matter, you know. My past. What matters is the future.”

“Oh, I disagree quite wholeheartedly,” Riddle said. “The past is intrinsically tied to the future… They are inseparable.”

“You—you don’t—you’re missing the bigger picture here,” Harry said, annoyed. “We have a real problem. In the _present_.”

“We?” Riddle said. He tilted his head to one side again, and when the wand light caught on his cheekbones and shone in his eyes Harry was momentarily distracted.

How could someone so evil look so hauntingly beautiful?

“I—yes,” Harry said. He forced that very, very unwelcome thought aside. “We’re trapped together, as you well know. And you are the one keeping us trapped, no?”

“Perhaps,” Riddle said vaguely.

“I think you are,” Harry said boldly. “The door to that vault didn’t close all on its own—you did that. And I’ve seen the power you have in there. You could open it if you wanted. So here is my deal for you, Riddle.”

Harry took a deep breath. His plan was based on many wild assumptions that he was still uncertain about, but it was the only hope he had left. Riddle watched him with curiosity gleaming in his eyes.

“We escape Gringotts… together.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah this is going to have more than 7 chapters.... XD


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